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Thanks for watching this TAS of Spider-Man/X-Men: Arcade's Revenge by jaysmad and Brandon Evans.

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jaysmad primarily authored the Spider-Man sections.

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Taking damage here is necessary to save time.

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For those who've never played this game, you need to deactivate the bombs in a specific order.

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When hit, we are propelled in the opposite direction. This allows us to take many shortcuts.

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Web-swinging and web-cancel are much faster than walking or jumping.

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As web-swinging makes you skip a pixel, we are able to damage boost here.

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Turning around is very slow after web-canceling, so swinging is unnecessary here.

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We must wait until the web is totally gone until we can swing again.

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We skip the Shockers as killing them is useless.

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While standing, we can only shoot once every 8 frames.

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We use the backward web-shot trick, which consists of dropping down a ledge for 1 frame while shooting in the opposite direction.

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This technique allows us to shoot every 2 frames. Swinging does not hurt this boss and web-shots deal 1 damage.

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Considering that N'astirh has 30HP and each web-shot does 1 point of damage, this leads to him dying nearly instantly.

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We backtrack to reach the lower ledge for a big swing.

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We skip the higher section by swinging under the wall. This is the only known time where this is possible.

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Jumping against the wind will slow us down, so the best thing to do is either swing or take damage.

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Rhino has 24HP and can't be damaged by web-shots.

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Carnage has 25HP. When hit, he gets knocked back and becomes temporarily invincible.

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He receives 1 damage point from web-shots; he also takes 2 from a swing hit, but this can be doubled if positioned correctly.

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Brandon primarily authored the Wolverine sections.

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If properly timed, you can pass through a stunned Jack-in-the-Box unharmed.

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We punch at arbitrary times to manipulate the positions of certain enemies, namely the soldiers.

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This might work because this changes what addresses enemies are loaded into, as punching is perhaps handled like an enemy.

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If you withdraw your claws at exactly the right time, you can do the same damage as claws while dropping a heart.

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The Jack-in-the-Box normally drops hearts when you kill them with your fists. Collecting hearts is just for style.

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You can "kill" the water gun shots by hitting them. This becomes useful later.

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Most of this level has a fairly straightforward strategy. Just run and jump at the right times.

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You can slash in mid-air to take off 1 layer of the destructible wall.

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The punching manipulation allows us to hit these soldiers without stopping.

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We're not sure if the water gun objects can be manipulated, but doing so probably wouldn't help.

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This is the only known case in which we can detonate a block while simultaneously jumping on it.

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The punching manipulation also pays off here.

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Sadly, it doesn't seem like we can manipulate the clown.

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Jumping from here is fastest.

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Apocalypse has 48HP.

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Claws will hit a variable number of times per slash, doing 2 damage for each hit.

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We have tried multiple times and can't seem to do any better on this fight.

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WARNING: These subtitles contain spoilers. We recommend you watch this level without them first.

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Juggernaut begins with 32HP.

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Hitting him on the head with an anvil does 4 damage, while the 1 ton weights do 2 damage.

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Claws do 1 damage, but contrary to common belief, they will only do so at the end of the level.

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Worse yet, his health can't go below 2HP until you can use your claws.

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The game's failure to explain this has haunted non-assisted players!

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As Juggernaut gets pushed back whenever he collides with a block, we detonate the blocks in his way.

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From this point on, we try to get to the end as fast as we can purely for stylistic reasons.

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When Juggernaut collides with an anvil / weight, it does 1 damage, but this is useless and slows him down.

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...Does anything seem wrong with this picture?

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As we got Juggernaut down to 2HP, we merely need to perform 2 slashes, which are now both allowed.

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Although we're told that this can't be done on a console, this ending amuses us.

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jaysmad primarily authored the Cyclops sections.

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Rubies give life and points. When your HP is low, you lose the chance to shoot rapidly.

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The lower route is much slower than the higher route here.

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We take damage for entertainment purposes and to show that detonating a mine while in a cart doesn't automatically kill you.

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Jumping from this platform helps us avoid invisible blocks in the ceilling.

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Carts filled with rubies give large amounts of life and points.

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Running in a cart is not possible unless you enter the cart while running.

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The yellow enemies are immune to optic blasts, but the rocks that they throw at you aren't.

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Luckily, we can shoot the rock and punch the yellow enemy in a single jump.

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Big rubies yield a lot of HP, but more importantly, they double the power of Cyclops' beam.

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The boost wears off after shooting a couple of times, so it is best to save some shots for the boss.

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The sentinel has 127HP. The first shot deals 24 damage and 54 when boosted. After that, it will only deal 2 damage.

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The following shots must be done right after the sentinel lifts his arm.

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We stun the bot so he can't shoot, then stall for 2 frames to shoot the rock. This is much faster than jumping into the ceiling.

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As we can't get both the ruby and kill the bot, we choose the bot has it gives 600 points as opposed to 300.

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Here is another example of where stalling 2 frames to shoot is faster than jumping and punching.

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When the sentinel is up in the air, shooting only deals 2 damage until he lifts his arm.

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Master Mold is defeated in 3 parts: the arm, then the head, and then the body. Shooting deals 6 damage while hitting deals 16.

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The arm has 72HP. When he lifts his arm, it becomes out of reach so that it can only be shot.

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The head has 80HP and is out of reach, so you can only defeat it with shots.

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The body has 112HP and is out of range unless Master Mold is hovering on the left side of the screen.

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jaysmad primarily authored the Storm sections, which he blasted through despite being one of the slowest parts of the game.

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Storm's levels consist of blowing up water reactors to raise the water level in order to reach the end of the stage.

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It is impossible to reach the next reactor before the water stops raising, so there's no rush to blow them up.

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Shells give a lot of points and contain a pearl giving the ability to shoot a whirlwind that deflects enemy projectiles.

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Passing through the exploding doors is faster than waiting.

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8-Way Lightning allows Storm to do a shot going in every direction as well as destroy doors in 1 shot.

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Bubbles recover your air.

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Staying away from the exploding reactor and the fish reduces lag.

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You can stand in the electric current without taking damage.

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The boss is 10 glass globes that can only be hit 1 after the other.

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Each globe needs to be hit twice. After 24 frames, the next globe can be hit.

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The trick is that as soon as the next globe becomes vulnerable, there is a small amount of time in which 3 globes can be hit.

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After defeating the boss, it is impossible to take damage.

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There is 1 last reactor that raises the water level to the boss, but with the 8-Way Lightning, it becomes unnecessary.

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Still, we blow it up after the battle for extra points.

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Brandon primarily authored the Gambit sections.

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Gambit can throw cards forward, upward, and downward if he's in the air.

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The cards you throw forward go farther the longer you hold down the throwing button, and it's very precise. Perfect for TAS!

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Notice how we make the knight piece run into the death dealing card.

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You stop traveling horizontally for 1 frame when leaving the ground, so we avoid doing so whenever possible.

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The big debate for the next section, which involves a wall of blocks, is whether or not to use the fireball move.

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Early tests of it created lag and melted the block we need to jump off of, but we thought it might destroy the wall faster.

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We managed to make it not lag and melt the block below Gambit early enough to allow him to jump off of the block below it.

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This maneuver allowed us to get past the wall 2 frames faster than our best attempt without the move.

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Gambit hits his head to fall faster, then hugs the wall on the next jump. We'd lose time getting the item.

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Jumping here is faster than walking off. We absorb a bullet with the fireball move to avoid getting hurt.

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The King of Spades has 56HP and can be attacked with 8 cards, each dealing 1HP, per phase.

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After hit 8 times, he becomes invincible and starts circling you.

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Gambit's positioning when he starts and finishes moving greatly impacts how long it takes for him to stop.

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When he stops, he spawns enemies and eventually becomes vulnerable again. This cycle repeats until the end.

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In the final phase, we throw extra cards to occupy many of the addresses that the boss uses to spawn enemies.

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If we don't do this, there will be too many objects on the screen to throw all 8 cards.

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Another suicidal victory!

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Although this level is an autoscroller, it proved to be very entertaining thanks to Gambit's highly exploitable abilities.

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That's right! Gambit's cards can be used to make drum noises (Brandon plays the drum kit, by the way)!

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Some headbanging of sorts.

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You have to appreciate how well the explosion sound effect complements the bass drum hits.

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Headbanging in the air, which looks a little more realistic.

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Here's an example of one of the many invisible platforms found in this level.

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Jumping and starting to move after starting to throw a card up makes Gambit's running animation play in the air.

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More sliding like we had in the previous level's boss fight.

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It wouldn't be an autoscroller if we didn't have to resort to doing left-right-left-right a lot. Notice the headbanging?

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In order to collect the maximum number of items in this section, we have to move faster than the camera.

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The column of items farthest towards the right doesn't seem to be collectible for some reason.

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If you collide with the wall at a certain angle, you can pass through it, though we cannot go far enough to collect the stars inside.

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Doing so traps us inside the wall, and the only way out is by blowing up the block next to you, and it's too late to do that.

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Hooray for explosions!

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When Gambit throws cards off to the right side of the screen, pay attention to the left.

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Somehow, we managed to corrupt that tile repeatedly...

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The cards manage to blow up blocks on the other side of the screen.

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Managed to wedge Gambit in between these bricks unscathed.

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Multiple cards can hit walls at the same time if done correctly.

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Dance Gambit, dance!

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Gambit can overlap an enemy so long as it's stunned and not take damage.

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Thanks to the blocks, we can reach the boss, the Black Queen, sooner than normal. This is the fastest route we could find.

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From there, we attack both of the boss' arms until they come off (18 hits each). The cards hit them as soon as they become vulnerable.

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After that, we attack the head 44 times and the battle is over.

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To see the full battle using a camera hack, see the submission page for a video.

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We can have Gambit hold his arm out without throwing cards because the explosions overload the screen with objects.

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Here are the final levels. Here, each character has a small segment to complete.

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These levels mostly employ a simple strategy: run right / left for great justice.

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We need to fall in between these barrels in order to pass.

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If we try to hit our head on the ceiling to descend faster, we'll just jump through it and hit it like a wall.

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We have to stall in order to get behind the first 2 clowns and kill them.

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We must jump over this clown to avoid getting hit, forcing us to stall at the ledge to continue.

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For some reason, jumping on the canister instead of falling onto it allows Wolverine to continue without stopping.

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Again, we use the fireball move to avoid unavoidable bullets.

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For some bizarre reason, jumping here is slower than falling. Oh well, we can still kill all of the enemies.

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As Storm plays like Gambit in her final level, Brandon primarily authors this section.

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She stalls when she jumps and has a special whirlwind move that operates like Gambit's fireball move.

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For some odd reason, the last projectile she fires at an enemy will go through it even though it hits.

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It's very hard to avoid taking damage in this level without wasting time.

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A lot of the optimization for this level is reducing lag. We did our best, but it could be improvable.

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We have Storm hit her head here to fall faster.

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The level ends when Storm lands, no matter how soon she reaches the goal. She gets pushed back for going beyond it.

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Here, we do a pixel skip damage boost like we did in the intro stage.

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We jump here instead of swinging so that we don't have to wait for the web to retract to make the next swing.

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Because of the low ceiling, it's impossible to do a web-swing as well as kill the thrower without wasting time.

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This section ends when Spider-Man's feet touch the bottom of the screen. Damage boosting and jumping takes the same amount of time.

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The final boss, Arcade, starts off in a large robot that operates like Russian nesting dolls with 24, 16, and 12HP respectively.

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This phase is similar to N'astirh in that swinging is useless and webshots deal 1 damage.

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After the smallest robot is destroyed, Arcade robots appear 1 by 1 until 3 appear at once. There are 10 total.

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Swinging kills them instantly, while web-shots and the X-Men need 2 hits. Gambit kills the second bot.

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Input can be cut off after starting this swing. Instead, we dance and press start on the next screen to reach the ending quicker.

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Thanks for watching this TAS of Spider-Man/X-Men: Arcade's Revenge by jaysmad and Brandon Evans!